The Sunday Survival Buzz #140

Welcome to this week’s Sunday Survival Buzz with an update on my own preps and announcements from the Backdoor Survival blog.

Honesty counts, right? This has not been the best of weeks for me personally. Perhaps the hard drive failure before my trip was an omen because three days into my vacation, I experienced an additional hard drive failure in my backup computer. Only a prepper would take two computers and an iPad on vacation, right?

Long story short, I was able to keep in touch but the process and the experience was stressful. Coupled with news of Ebola stateside, the lack of credible information, and an unfulfilled compulsion to write and, well, I have been a mess and grumpy to boot.

So what about my preps?

I learned how to crochet! It is not that the art of crochet is difficult, but up until now, my fingers did not get it. I plan to make some hats and slippers with this new-found skill and plan to crochet as a past-time if we are ever grid down for an extended period of time.

Another prep this week is that on the way home from the airport, we stopped at Costco and stocked up on additional supplies including heavy duty trash bags, nitrile gloves, dog food, canned fruits, veggies,chili, and a giant tub of popcorn. It is rare that I am able to purchase prep items directly (as opposed to online) so I took advantage of the opportunity to shop in person.

That about covers it for me this week. Now for some tips and announcements.

BACKDOOR SURVIVAL MAIL BAG & READER TIPS

This came in a few weeks ago from Margie. Her point is well taken.

My husband and i have had an important “prepping” experience this month. He has been an avid runner for years and has kept in excellent condition. But along with that he has had a longtime heart murmur and has had mitral valve prolapse. Before you say he was crazy to run under those circumstance, please know that his doctors were fully aware of this information and because he is in such excellent shape, he has avoided serious consequences to these medical issues.

How does this relate to prepping?

Well, he had valve repair surgery nearly a month ago and we both learned the importance of each of us knowing the other’s “job” when it comes to getting and being prepared. No amount of flashlights or canned goods can replace being prepared to step in and take over if and when the need arises. Hubby is doing fine, recovering nicely, but is by no means out of the woods with his recovery. We are looking at 6 months to a year before he is back to “his old self” again.

I have a lot to learn in these coming months to fill his proverbial shoes. And we have both learned that being prepared is not just about gathering supplies, it is about knowing the day-to-day simple operations that keep you going and what to do when life throws you a curve ball.

Please remember this as you prepare. It will definitely payoff some day?

Thank you, Margie, for sharing your experience and your thoughts with us. Whether it is prepping skills or merely knowing how to balance the family checkbook, couples need to learn to backstop each other so one can do the job of another if and when it becomes necessary.

Everyone at Backdoor Survival sends good thoughts to you and your husband for a speedy recovery.

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Ranger Rick offered this tip in response to How to Safely Shelter In Place During a Pandemic

I use to design underground shelters for friends and one thing that helped considerable bringing in less contaminated air was once the air intake was thru the window, I installed a 90* elbow turned down and glue to it an adapter to increase the size of the air intake from 2″ to 4″ or bigger.

You get the same air flow ,but at the mouth of the inlet being so much bigger, it did not have as much suction due to less vacuum at the inlet being 4 or 6 inches instead of 2 inches.

You can also add a cheesecloth or a K&N Air filter foam cover over the air inlet to aid in stopping unwanted particles in the air coming inside.

HEPA filter inside the vacuum will be Plan B. :-}

LOOKING FOR SOMETHING?

There is a robust search function in the right hand column of the BDS website under “Searching For Something”. One of these days I will work on organizing my posts into better categories so that it is easy to find one of the 900 articles the Backdoor Survival archives. But for now, use “Search” or the archive page (accessible from the menu bar).

ESSENTIAL OILS: ITEM OF THE WEEK

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS

Long term Backdoor Survival sponsor Solo Stove is wrapping up a Kickstarter Campaign for their new larger Solo Stove called the “Campfire”. I normally make it a matter of policy not to promote Kickstarter campaigns but am making exception this time based upon the strength of the Solo Stove itself and the company’s generous sponsorship of this website.

I just became a backer of this project myself and promise to review the Campfire when it arrives. You can check it out here (and don’t those roasted marshmallows look good??):

THE FINAL WORD

Has anyone noticed how cold it has become in the Pacific Northwest? Although leaves are still on the trees, it feels like winter and a few nights ago, we had a wind storm that blew everything in our backyard to heck and beyond. For me this was a reminder that I need to double check my supplies to ensure I have what I will need if the power goes out, including batteries that are fully charged and the dead space in my freezer filled with frozen jugs of water.

So what about you – what did you do to prep this week?

Enjoy your next adventure through common sense and thoughtful preparation!Gaye

Related Articles:

Bargain Bin: Below you will find links to some personal and BDS reader favorites and items from the current Amazon Top 10.

Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse: Although this is a book of fiction, it is also serves as a survival manual of sorts. The depiction of society three years following a collapse is so very real that I could almost put myself in the same room as the members of the survival group that has banded together to protect each other as they live in a communal retreat. The section on a bartering market was hugely insightful and gave me some idea of how it might work in a real, SHTF situation. Considering when this was written, Patriots is eerily timely.

One Second After: For many, the novel "One Second After" was a game changer that convinced them of the need to be prepared. If you have not read this book, you really should. This is my #1 pick when it comes to survival fiction.

LifeStraw Personal Water Filter: The LifeStraw is considered the most advanced, compact, ultra light personal water filter available. It contains no chemicals or iodinated resin, no batteries and no moving parts to break or wear out. It weighs only 2oz. making it perfect for the prepper. There is also a larger sized LifeStraw Family currently available with free shipping.

Note: the price can vary by color so if you are not particular, scroll through the colors and save a couple of bucks.

Dorcy LED Wireless Motion Sensor Flood Lite: Don’t let the $20 price lead you to think this wireless flood light is wimpy. I have two of these and feel that these lights are worth double the price. Using D-cell batteries, the Dorcy floodlight will light up a dark room or a dark stairway in an instant. I can not recommend these enough.

Morakniv Craftline Q Allround Fixed Blade Utility Knife: ANOTHER FAVORITE KNIFE! Also known as the Mora 511, this is now my favorite knife. It is made of Swedish steel and is super sharp. Many Backdoor Survival have emailed me indicating this is now their favorite knife too. I paid $12 for this knife; it was worth $12 and of course is a steal at $8.07.

FordEx Group 300lm Mini Cree Led Flashlight: FAVORITE! Here we go with another flashlight. At the time of this writing, this one is only $3.80 with free shipping. It is super mini sized, bright and waterproof. Plus, it uses a single, standard AA sized battery. Pictured is one that I own in green but they come in basic black as well as some other colors.

For over 25 years Emergency Essentials has been providing the highest quality preparedness products at great prices. Plus, each month they feature sales that quite honestly are fantastic. This month give the gift preparedness.

Need something from Amazon (and who doesn’t)? I earn a small commission from purchases made when you begin your Amazon shopping experience here. You still get great Amazon service and the price is the same, no matter what.

Amazon has a feature called Shop Amazon - Most Wished For Items. This is an easy tool for finding products that people are ‘wishing” for and in this way you know what the top products are. All you need to do is select the category from the left hand side of the screen.

Help support Backdoor Survival. Purchases earn a small commission and for that I thank you!

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Are You Interested in Essential Oils?

If you are just getting started in using essential oils for wellness purposes, I recommend the Spark Naturals Health and Wellness Kitwhich includes all of my favorites or the Essential 4 Pack which includes Lavender, Lemon, Melaleuca (Tea Tree) and Peppermint.

Comments

With the Ebola threat on my mind I have been researching more natural easy to make home remedies for coughs, colds, etc.
I am a fan of elderberry and have gotten my family into taking the syrup everyday.
I bought more gloves and wipes and increased my kleenex and tp storage. It’s not where it should be but I will keep working on it.
My small house needs serious cleaning and organizing and I’m hoping to get to that “eventually”. It seems to be an unending battle.
I’m going to do Christmas shopping early this year and probably soon and through mail order.
I am guessing that by Christmas either the current viral threat will have calmed down or all heck will have broken loose.

Hi there Gaye. Having just started reading “One Second After” myself, I wonder if your tech problems might not be a good primer for what could happen if that scenario odccurs? Perhaps it is good practice? 😉

This week, I had to rebuild my immune system after going through a series of antibiotics for a minor infection for which I was prescribed an antibiotic. Coming to the rescue were kombucha, bone broth, elderberry syrup, vitamin C and priobiotic supplements.

At the BOL Homestead Cabin, Hubby and I transferred many of our household items for which we had duplicates at the suburban condo: a tea pot, fermenting crock, bread tins and muffins pans. We also welcomed our first overnight visitors who may become the backbone of our Mutual Aid Group. He is an accomplished hunter and former Army Nurse. She is a veteran organic gardener and food preservationist. Hubby and I spent a few hours doing the hard work of harvesting and preparing another half cord of firewood for the wood stove.

From Amazon, we ordered a very detailed atlas of the area surrounding the BOL so we can accurately gauge the distances and terrain to useful sights within our cabin. We are planning to make some day-hikes to nearby sites in the next few weeks to better acquaint ourselves with the terrain. We also met our nearest neighbors (1/2 a mile away) and hopefully will build a good relationship with them in the upcoming years. They are sturdy country folk who know the land and are expert hunters of the deer and bear, which are plentiful.

Gaye so sorry about your continuing hardware problems. I think there’s something in the air as mine went wonky too.

Excellent tip on the ‘know the other person’s job”. I thought the other day how my 16yo needs to learn how to work the generator. We were having a storm and my dh was out of town & my older so is now away at college, I’ve recently had surgery so I can’t do either right now. I was so thankful we didn’t lose power. So my younger one needs to learn the tasks too.

Not too much prepping done this week. I ordered some FD food items. I also came up with a list of #10 cans of FD foods I’d like to buy based on recipes. I picked up a few cases of water and some pears so I can make chocolate pear jam. I’ll either use to as gifts or a barter item.

I bought 10 bags of 200 triple size cotton balls for $1.00. Yes you read right 2,000 cotton balls for $1.00. They are fresh and new. So how could I walk away. Next I will need to figure out what to do with 2,000 cotton balls. Any ideas?

RE: “Has anyone noticed how cold it has become in the Pacific Northwest?”

No, but I noticed yesterday was slightly unusually like Summer in the Midwest.

Anyway, I bought an old Montgomery Wards short wave radio the other day for two bucks at an estate sale. (I also bought a spare casting net. Have you ever tried one of those? They are loads of fun on a beach, imho.)

I learned you’ve gotta fine tune a shortwave radio and listen at night to really hear much of anything. It was kind of disappointing to find it’s mostly christian talk and foreign languages. Regardless, it’s been kind of interesting messing with it.

It has a HAM dial, but the whole band is dead silence. I wonder why.
The CB band was about the same, but I listened to a couple of idiots chatting in a way that made little sense.

I also read some more about how antibiotics devastate your immune system and how your gut is a big key to immunity. From there, I wrote down a good recipe for homemade sauerkraut, which is a great probiotic. In fact, I read somewhere that the country with the people who lived the longest (over in the Romania area?) were also the biggest consumers of sauerkraut. Was there a link? May be.

…Then, I practiced fishing.

And Whoa, I found it’s been so long since I fished I couldn’t cast with a spinning reel for nothing! I used to be able to cast a bait or lure onto a dime spot. …Not anymore.

[After decades of regularly fishing I stopped for a few years because I was sick of every Fourth of July where I would go out fishing and have a DNR demand my “papers please” while he went through my stuff. So, I protested.

This year, I got a license just to try and keep up my skills, and found they sure are lacking. …It’s definitely Not like riding a bike.]

I recycled while fishing, too. I caught a shad fish, then cut it up, and caught a much larger editable fish. I haven’t done that in a Long time.

I also practiced burning an oil lamp at home. It really stank at first. Maybe it was due to the old (dirty?) wick? It’s not so bad now after half a tank. At first I was like, “This is Only a Summertime windows open kind of thing!!!”

But now, it’s burning ok and doesn’t stink so much.
Still, I appreciate my olive oil lamps a bit more all of the sudden.

I learned that you can eat hosta plants. They are everywhere here. Treat them like asparagus, they say. I dug one up from my neighbors yard and put it in a bucket to see how easy they are to grow. So far, it’s not looking good.

I bought some broad-head arrow points for my nephew so he can feed his grandpa if I cannot. Then I got to wondering, are those illegal for minors? I looked and looked and didn’t see any law against it where the hammer would come down on someone giving or owning such. I shook my head that I even have to consider searching the lawbooks to find that out. I only did it because the Wal_mart clerk was about to ID me for the purchase. I guess you have to be 18 to buy them at Wal-Mart. Yeesh,that’s about as bad as the time Gander Mountain tried to ID me for buying lead pellets for a pellet gun. …I left them at the counter vowing to Never return. …Then K-Mark demanded my date of birth in order to purchase fuel for my oil lamp. I left that behind, too, and vowed Never to return.
Is this all due to the expansion of the whacked out war against some drugs? Or, just a war against individuals? Am i going to soon run out of places to shop?

Pardon the length, I was just gonna say a little. But then I got to thinking. And, I did a lot this week.

You can buy a shortwave book at Radio Shack that will tell you when to listen and what Freq to tune to. You will not be able to listen to Hams talk unless the radio has single side band. You can hear code without it. Use a good antenna.

This past April while cutting down a tree, it took a wrong fall and one large branch fell on my husband. He has 32+ years cutting down trees so all precautions were taken but it twisted as it fell. He was screaming in pain but was able to tell me how to use a hydraulic jack to get under the branch to relieve the pressure. By the time the first responders and fire department got there, he was out from under the branch, sitting in a chair. The point is – know how to use your tools and depend on yourself. He did go to the emergency room, nothing broken.

Let’ssee Got my waterbob and N-100 masks the other day and I’ve put up 20lbs of white rice in the storage. Haven’t gone Grocerring yet (as my 3yr old grandson says). Store has a couple of good deals on some things for storage this week so I’ll be picking them up this week.

Gaye–Sorry to hear of your tech troubles ! Depending on where you are vacationing, one additional solution to HDD failures is to have all the important schtuff either 1. backed up onto one of those little affordable portable solid-state HDDs or 2. Even a large-sized flash drive (or two !) which could then be transferred onto a newly-bought gadget in case of failure. Hint: .TXT files or even .RTF files are WAY smaller than MS office files.

Yes I’m a Geek 😀 Used to do it for a living.

Prepping hints: don’t forget to have your most-vital info, including survival info, first aid info, etc. in HARD COPY, several copies ideally, to better prep for a long-term Grid-Down. that, and invest in a decent-quality solar charging system that will keep your gadgets topped off during those pesky three-day (or week-long !) Ice-storms and natural disasters.

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MEET GAYE

I'm Gaye, just an ordinary gal trying to make sense of our changing world. I am addicted to prepping, DIY projects, adult coloring books, and ballroom dancing. I live what I call a strategic life and believe you should too. Everyone needs to prepare for the worst and live for the best. Won't you join me?

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